Misdirection
by Garrae
Summary: As the song says: "Be careful not to lose the way. Into the Woods; who knows what may be lurking on the journey." Of course, one should always make sure to be home before dark. Especially on Hallowe'en. For the Castle Halloween Bash 2017.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

"Can't you read a map?"

"Yes! It's part of the guy code. Of course I can read a map!"

"So how are we suddenly in the middle of nowhere? You read it wrong."

He did _not_ read the map wrong. He has excellent map-reading skills. He _never_ gets lost. Not geographically, anyway. Something about Kate Beckett means that he's permanently psychologically lost in her head. Her mind is not susceptible to being mapped.

"I did _not_. Look."

"I'm driving. I can't look."

"So pull over."

He's irritated now. He hasn't read the map wrongly and Beckett has no right to snip and snipe and sneer. It really doesn't help that the rain is belting down on this cold, dark night and that he would rather be nearly anywhere than in the middle of nowhere (the unconscious repetition of Beckett's words doesn't improve his mood) in an uncomfortable cruiser with an angry Beckett.

Not that he's any less angry. Their so-called witness was a total waste of space and gas. Claimed to have important information, but turned out to be a ghoulish attention-seeker who, faced with Beckett's rapidly rising intimidation levels, caved in and admitted he hadn't seen a thing. All lies. Castle had thought Beckett would shoot him. He's come to the conclusion that she only didn't arrest the idiot because she couldn't bear to share car space with him for the two hours plus it will take them to get back to the precinct.

Castle isn't really sure that Beckett can bear to share space with _him_ , but she doesn't get a choice about that. They're not on great terms right now. Not that this is anything new. They haven't been on great terms since the summer, really, and they both know why that is. He should never have looked into it, but… well, he'd wanted to help… but it had totally backfired. Now they're walking warily around each other and never saying what they – he – should. He doesn't dare, because Kate-bloody-Beckett's impenetrably impervious shell doesn't and hasn't given him a single clue about what she thinks of him for six weeks. He's back, but _they_ – whatever _they_ they'd never quite reached – certainly are not.

And now they're pulled over on the verge of a back road in the dark and the driving rain and they are not where they should be _at all_. Not geographically, not temporally, and _especially_ not romantically.

"I've pulled over," she snaps. "Show me the map."

He slaps it open into her lap and illuminates it with the torch on his phone. "See? These are the directions we took. We should be back on the Palisades Interstate and halfway to the New Jersey Turnpike by now."

"You must have got it wrong. This isn't the right road."

"I can _see_ that!" he snaps back. "So you tell me how we took all the right turns and we're in the middle of the woods? You must have gone the wrong way at one of them. Typical," he mutters. "You never listen to me anyway."

"I did _so_ listen. You steered me wrong." There's an almost indistinguishable mutter after that. If Castle was really listening, he might think it was _just like before the summer_. "Anyway, we got another problem."

"What?"

"We're running out of gas."

" _What_? How come? Didn't you check it?"

" _Yes_ , I freaking checked it. It was three-quarters full when we left that useless dumbass. Now it's on the line."

"Beckett, that's just not possible," Castle says, angry now. First she gets them lost, then she hasn't got gas. Is she ill? Really ill, not just a cold or the flu? Something that would affect her brain? If she is, she shouldn't be out of her apartment. "We've only been going for an hour. If it was three quarters full, even if you'd been doing ninety – which you weren't – you'd still have half a tank."

"Well, we don't. See?"

He leans over. Sure enough, the needle's on the red line. More pertinently, he can smell the cherry scent from her skin and hair. Unfortunately, he can feel the icy glare from her eyes, which is very off-putting.

"So we're in the middle of the deep dark woods with almost no gas, in the pouring rain."

"Yeah."

"Isn't this a cliché?"

"Yeah. But right now it seems to be a _real_ cliché." She doesn't sound impressed. "I don't know about you, but I don't see a light over at the Frankenstein place either."

"Nope," he answers automatically – and then snickers. "Well, well, Detective Beckett. Bad cult B-movies?" She doesn't answer that. The chill irritation in the lightless car persists.

"Doesn't your phone have GPS?" she suddenly realises.

"Doesn't yours?"

"It's dead." She sounds horrified.

"Forget to charge that along with forgetting the gas?" he bites.

"It was fully charged when I left. Now it's dead. You've got power, 'cause you used the torch. So use the GPS."

Castle taps. "No signal. No GPS."

"So we're lost."

At that point his phone dies too.

"Now who forgot to charge their phone?" she bites right back at him, in the same acid tone.

"I didn't."

"You were quick enough to assume I did. So now you did too you're trying to weasel out of it?"

"I had full charge when we left. Anyway, I got a powerpack. And that's always charged."

He attaches the powerpack, huffing – and then stares at it.

"It's empty. It can't be empty. I haven't used it since I charged it last night, and it holds eight full charges. It _can't_ be empty." He moves his wide-eyed stare to Beckett's irritated face. "Beckett, this isn't right. One mistake, maybe. But not both of us, not for everything. We're lost, we got no gas, we got no signal, power, nothing. It's like a bad horror movie."

"I'm not sleeping in the car," she says, ignoring everything he's just said. "The red line means I've still got 30 miles. We're going to keep going till we get out of the woods or find somewhere with a phone."

She starts the car again and moves off. Castle, completely flummoxed by the turn events have taken, stares sightlessly out of the window.

Behind them, the wind sounds sharply, and the rain gleams. Those of a credulous and superstitious disposition might have thought it sounded like a laugh, and the gleams might have been of light catching eyes. Of course, that would be ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as the thought that the brief glint of the cold, white crescent moon through a break in the clouds, tips upturned, might be chill amusement at the predicament below.

"We're not getting anywhere," Castle points out, ten minutes of empty, black and steadily worsening track later. If anything, they're deeper in the woods than they had been. Beckett ignores him, just as she has for the last ten minutes. She's glaring at the dark, which – Castle shivers – is crowding close around them. It's unpleasantly thick darkness, here in the forest, with no streetlights or ambient light, in the now heavy cloud and driving rain and wind. The trees around them bend with the force of the wind, and his overwrought imagination thinks that the branches are reaching down. Too much late night movie-watching and reading, he reminds himself, and forces himself not to shudder at the wind's malicious whine.

A further five unpleasant moments later, the headlights illuminate a wooden structure. It seems to be a cabin.

"A house. Maybe it'll have a phone. If nothing else, we can ask to stay for the night and call for help in the morning."

"Morning?"

"Castle, it's after nine, and we are lost without gas."

He hadn't noticed the time. Beckett pulls up to the building and, leaving the headlights on, steps out of the car. Castle barely stops himself hauling her back in. He does notice that her hand is on her gun and her shield blatantly on view. She pushes the door – and it opens.

Another horror movie cliché.

"Beckett," he falters, but she doesn't hear him. A light goes on, and that's when he realises that there's nobody in the house except her. If anyone had been home, there would have been a light. _Over at the Frankenstein place_. Except there's no shlock in this horror.

"Beckett, this is a bad plan," he whimpers. Since she's twenty feet away, she doesn't hear it. Every particle of his writer's DNA is telling him that this is going to go horribly, horribly wrong. It's all the components of every scary movie he's ever seen, and the worst thing is that his imagination is in overdrive. Every writer knows that their imagination will always, always come up with worse ideas than they can put on paper or on screen.

Beckett appears, silhouetted in the faint light of the doorway. She bends down to wedge the door open, and returns to the car.

"C'mon. There's no-one here, so we can borrow it for the night."

He whimpers very quietly to himself again, and jumps a mile high when Beckett switches the headlights off and then slams the car door shut. He scuttles inside.

Much to his astonishment, the house is well-kept, in a countrified fashion: chintz and rag rugs, unstylish wooden furniture. Strangely, it has kerosene lamps, not electric light. That's any hope of charging up gone. The way things had been panning out, though, he'd expected cobwebs and corpses, if not snakes and skeletons as well. Instead, it's cosy and comfortable, with a wooden settle with cushions. He notices most particularly that the settle is the only sitting place except for a dining table. Hard upon that thought, he notices that this is a very small dwelling, and that the bench settle is also quite small, to fit the space. While Beckett is chewing her lip and muttering crossly at her dead phone, he spots the staircase and, taking a stray lamp, sneaks upstairs.

Oh. Oh _shit_. Oh, this is the cliché to end all clichés, and possibly to end Castle as well. No. This is just not happening to him. It's not _fair_.

The wind whistles round the window, and Castle's oversensitised and half-spooked ears are _sure_ it's laughing nastily at him. He stares glumly at the solitary queen size bed. It has four posters, and thin voile curtains, currently tied back. It has bolster pillows, from which a few feathers are floating, sheets and blankets. It looks about a hundred years old, if it weren't clean, but very comfortable.

It also looks far too small for the two of them to preserve a decent distance. Four-poster beds are supposed to be large. It dawns on Castle that people in those days were generally much smaller than Beckett and he are.

He is so dead. But what a way to spend his last night: lost in the woods and closeted in a log cabin with Beckett and only one bed.

"Castle!" arrows up the stairs, in said person's sharp-cut tones. He clatters down. Beckett is regarding the space with a distinctly displeased eye. "There's no modern equipment at all. Just a wood stove, old cooking equipment and a cast iron kettle." She peers out of the window. "There's an outhouse back there. If I hunt around for something to light the fire with, can you go out and see if there's some firewood and kindling? It's getting chilly in here." She thinks swiftly. "And more kerosene? I don't want it to be totally dark."

That had sounded a tiny touch nervous, which Castle doesn't point out. He takes his lamp, and trepidatiously makes his way to the outhouse. The rain batters at his unprotected head, the gale whips at him, and there are strange noises out in the blackness around him. When he flicks his head to look, there's nothing there, but from the corners of his eyes he's sure he can see small lights. Will-o-the-wisps, he tells himself, and even so steps faster. He never used to be scared of the dark.

The outhouse proves to have three things of which Castle is very glad. One is a pile of firewood and, next to it, kindling, with a basket in which he can carry a goodly amount. The second is a jerry-can of kerosene. The last is a primitive bathroom, walled off. This is less pleasant than more modern plumbing, but very welcome. He can hear water running underneath the facility, and concludes that there is a stream or river to clean matters up.

He goes back to the main house as quickly and nervously as he came, carrying with him as much wood and kindling as he can lift, plus the kerosene. He doesn't want to go out in the dark again unless he really, really needs to. The rain is letting up, but the wind is high and the trees are creaking ominously: the branches sweeping towards him, clutching on empty air; he's sure he can see small lights and movement in his peripheral vision but when he turns his head there's nothing there. He is infinitely glad to attain the house.

In the interim, Beckett has hunted through the kitchen area and set the kettle on the top of the stove.

"I've got wood," Castle says. She startles.

"Oh, it's you." She sounds relieved. "I can't find a bathroom." Her eyes are flickering around the room. "The wind really makes weird noises out here."

"Yeah," Castle agrees, fervently. "Um… about the bathroom. Um… that outhouse?"

Beckett acquires an expression of considerable disgust. "Ugh."

"Um… take a light. And Kleenex."

" _Ugh_."

"Shall I set the fire?" he asks hurriedly, and buries his face in the open door of the stove, grabbing for kindling and wood. Behind him, he can hear Beckett clicking out to the outhouse. He finds some matches – also strangely old-fashioned – and a long, thin wooden spill, and sets the fire alight.

Five minutes later she clicks back, considerably faster than she went, looking downright scared and rather bedraggled. The scared expression is wiped off her face as soon as she notices him looking at her, but it still makes him feel a lot better. He's pretty scared too.

"It's better with the stove going," she notes. "Let's put the kettle on and see if there's anything to drink."

"Scotch would be good," Castle mutters balefully. "Where's the fridge?"

"There isn't a fridge."

"Is there _any_ food or drink?"

"I don't know."

They look through all the cupboards, and finally find a crock of flour, some butter, and some salt.

"It won't be great," Castle says, "but I can try to make some biscuits. At least it's food."

Beckett pokes into a tin, and yelps. "Tea! No coffee – Philistines – but tea. Hot drink. Okay. You try to make biscuits and I'll get the kettle boiling."

"Beckett, there's no faucet at the sink."

She looks blankly at him. "No faucet? What _is_ this place? A History Home?"

"I guess there's a well, or a pump outside."

There is an unpleasant pause, in which the unpleasant noise of the storm – they hope it's just the storm – outside is very clear. Suddenly there's a loud bang, and both of them jump. The thick blackness outside the windows menaces them.

"It's only a branch falling," Beckett says bravely.

"Yep."

"We need water."

"Yep."

"A lot of water."

Castle thinks he knows where this is going already.

"Let's both find buckets and bring in enough for the whole night," she adds. It's not quite quavering.

He was right. He now knows that Beckett doesn't want to go out in the dark alone, and won't admit it. Just like he doesn't want to go out, or admit it.

"Okay." He hunts around and spots buckets by the door. "Four buckets. That should do."

"It'll have to." It's very soft, but Castle hears it.

"Let's prop the door open, and take a light."

They peer out into the night, neither keen to leave the safety of the house. The thin, weak light from the kerosene lamp discloses a gleam which might be the metal of a pump. It's only a few yards from the door.

"I'll go first," Beckett volunteers. There is an unusual shake underlying her firm words. "You make sure the door doesn't close."

He puts a manly arm around her shoulder, briefly, patting her. "I won't let it close. Promise when it's my turn you won't either?"

"Promise. Let's do this."

She detaches from him, rather more slowly than she might have, her irritation – with him, anyway – dissipated, then strides out to the pump and rapidly fills her two buckets, as Castle holds the light as high as he can. She's glancing around in all directions as she pumps, tense and ready, her gun on her hip. If the buckets weren't full, she'd surely run back to the house. The buckets are placed in the kitchen, and she returns to take the light from Castle. His arm slips back around her, and retreats before she can object.

As Beckett had done, he pumps the buckets full as quickly as he can and retreats. The rain has ceased for now, and thin, high cloud ghosts across the sky. The stars are very bright: the new moon a narrow crescent above him. The trees bend and creak, and he is very pleased to be back inside with the door firmly shut against the night noises.

* * *

 _Thank you to all readers and reviewers._

 _For the 2017 Hallowe'en Bash, in 4 chapters. Tue/Thu/Sun/Tue posting._


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"It's much darker than at Dad's cabin," she says thoughtfully.

"Mm?" He slides up to her. "Biscuits? Maybe if we eat something we'll feel better?"

"Okay. You do that. I've never made biscuits."

"You never cook. You live on takeout."

Beckett turns a cold shoulder to him, and fills the kettle, setting it on the stove. She moves a step away to sit down, when there is an earth shattering crack and boom and she leaps like a hare right into Castle, who has leaped right into her.

"That was loud," she says, almost calmly.

"Yeah."

Castle carefully doesn't mention that his arms are around her. He also doesn't mention that her heart is jumping like a jackrabbit though her face is bland. He drops his arms, which is substantially harder than it should be, and notices with interest that she stays put for another instant. Maybe he won't die when she finds out about the bedroom… who is he kidding? He will die, and if there are any more noises like the last one, he will die of fright.

"I'm going to make the biscuits," he says, and turns to the kitchen surface. Beckett sits down on the settle.

Two minutes later, she's leaning on the work surface and watching Castle. Her hands are still. She's watching his hands knead the flour and butter. The stove has warmed the room: it's almost cosy now, to match its style. The pan is on the side, ready, with a knob of butter in it.

"Checking out my talented fingers?" He adds the water, and keeps mixing. Shortly, he'll have dough.

"No. I'm hungry."

He pouts. Beckett scowls. "I'm going to make the tea," she says. The kettle is not yet boiling.

"Give it a moment. If it's an old-fashioned kettle, it'll whistle when it's ready."

He finishes mixing and flattens out the dough. "Were there cookie cutters anywhere?"

Beckett produces them, and Castle cuts out several rounds. "Pan on the heat, please," he says, and she does. The butter melts and then sizzles, and Castle drops the rounds on to the hot fat. They sizzle too, not exactly enticingly. The kettle starts to whistle, and Beckett slides round him to brew tea. They'll need something to drink to force the biscuits down, Castle thinks.

While the biscuits cook, he uses a small amount of the cold water and some of the hot in the kettle to wash his hands. There is only harsh soap, so that has to do.

Beckett sets out cups as Castle flips and prods the biscuits, and then takes the large, old-fashioned teapot to the wooden table.

"No milk," she complains.

"No. These are just about ready. Shall I put them all out?"

"Might as well. We could use the rest of the dough for breakfast?"

"I guess."

Castle joins Beckett at the table, and takes a biscuit, tentatively. She pours the tea. If they weren't lost, out of gas and without phones, it would almost be pleasant. It's certainly removed a lot of her irritation levels, one way or the other. Now if only that could be made permanent...

The wind continues to whistle, and the rain restarts, battering the windows. Castle shivers.

"Are you cold?" Beckett asks, almost sympathetically.

"Yeah…" he says mendaciously. Cold in his soul, possibly.

"Me too."

That's wholly unexpected. He bites into the biscuit, to give himself time to think. It's not dreadful. It's also not very good. Lack of raising agent will do that to a biscuit. But it's food, it's just about edible, and the tea washes it down.

"Let's finish supper, and then work out what to do." He manages a weak smile. "It's a mystery, and we're _good_ at mysteries."

She smiles weakly back, and nods. "These aren't bad," she notes. Castle hears an attempt to be supportive, and himself notes that her eyes are still flicking around, assessing, nervous; and her hand keeps dropping to touch her gun. She swallows her biscuit down, and chases it with convulsive gulps of tea, just as he has done.

"Let's go sit down," she says, biscuits choked down, tea finished, the washing up done, as best they can. "Think this through. It's weird."

"Sure is," Castle agrees, heartfelt. "Everything went off or wrong at once. And now we're stuck in a house that's straight out of 1850 with no way to contact anyone, on Hallowe'en, and I don't know about you, but to me this is every bad movie cliché all wrapped up in one. All we need is someone to knock on the door" –

Beckett shrieks. Castle screams.

"What the hell was _that_?"

Beckett frantically looks around, gun out and in her trembling hand. The rapping noise comes again.

"Branch," she exhales. "Just a branch on the window."

She sits down. Castle grabs her and hangs on.

"Come here," he breathes desperately. "At least you're real."

"So is this gun." But she moves into him and wraps her hands round his shoulders. "So are you."

They cling to each other, while heart-rates slow and the rhythmic beating of the rain and counterpoint tapping of the branches becomes a known, understood noise, not a terrifying one. Even so, they don't let go of each other, until one of the lamps sputters and dies, out of kerosene.

"I'll refill it," Beckett says.

"Let's refill all of them. And make sure the matches are somewhere obvious."

"Oh, yes. Definitely."

She shivers, and Castle wraps her in. This has at least as much to do with his own shivers as a desire to cuddle Beckett. Every tiny noise outside scrapes his overstretched nerves raw, and Beckett has a gun. She also has a tight grip on him. Castle concludes that she is as nervy as he.

After a minute or so, they detach, carefully not meeting each other's eye, and fill up all the lamps as full as they will hold.

"What time is it?"

Castle looks at his watch. "Just after nine – hang on. It was nine when we got here. How can it still be nine?"

"My watch says just after nine too."

They stare at each other. "That's weird," Castle says, in a typical statement of the blindingly obvious. "Beckett…I think we've driven through a time slip."

"Don't be ridiculous. There are no such things as time slips."

"How do you explain it, then? Every bit of modern technology has failed."

Beckett's mouth opens. Then it shuts. Then it opens. Repeat, several times.

"You can't."

"There's got to be a good explanation."

Castle smiles very sweetly and smugly, and says nothing.

"Anyway, what time is it?"

"No idea," he shrugs, and then yawns. Yawns being infectious, Beckett yawns too.

"Guess it's bedtime."

At which point, Castle remembers the sleeping arrangements. He can't decide whether to tell her or not, when the decision is taken out of his hands as Beckett ascends the stairs. There is an ominous silence. He trudges slowly upstairs. Beckett is staring at the bed, which is unmoved by her expression. The rain, restarting, lashes the house as furiously as he expects her words will shortly lash him.

She turns around, eyes blazing.

A door slams downstairs.

Castle shrieks. Beckett screams. They grab for each other, and don't let go.

"What the _hell_ was that?"

"I don't know," she shivers. "But" – very reluctantly – "we need to go down and find out. We… we didn't bolt the doors, did we?" She isn't exactly hurrying to the stairs.

"I don't remember."

Beckett takes out her gun. This doesn't reassure Castle in the slightest. Ghosts, ghouls, and supernatural entities don't die when you shoot them – and he's certain that Beckett has neither stakes nor silver bullets. She'd have tried them on him.

She moves to the head of the stairs, gun out and finger on the trigger, with Castle padding behind her, holding a lamp. The pallid light it gives doesn't brighten more than a small area around them. She takes a step, sends a searching gaze around, belied by the white knuckles around her gun, steps again, silently. Castle is equally quiet, and equally tense. In the cold, dark silence there is a brushing noise below, as if of barefoot paces. Beckett keeps stepping at the same, slow, silent, measured pace, head turning, eyes sharp. Her gun is steady and level. Her shoulders are tight and her neck and back rigid.

They attain the lower floor. Nothing is visible in the small puddle of light. This does not improve Castle's growing terror or Beckett's now-palpable strain. They quarter the floor, as close as they can be without actually touching.

There is a whispering scrape behind them. Beckett flips round to find nothing, drawing sharp breaths. Castle gasps low in his throat.

"It's a ghost!"

"There's no such thing," she snaps, but her voice trembles.

"You explain it, then. Footsteps with no feet don't have a natural explanation – oh." He droops. "The broom in the corner is slipping down." It slips again, and the whispering scrape re-occurs.

"See, no ghosts." Beckett sounds very smug.

"It _could_ have bee – Aaagghhh!"

Castle's shriek is only bettered by Beckett's high-pitched howl as the slamming-door sound comes again. He grabs her. She slams back into his chest, and he automatically wraps his arms around her waist – allowing her gun-toting hands clearance. He's never hugged her before today, but his arms don't need the involvement of his brain to take his chance when it comes. Besides which, now she's a human shield, with a gun.

He doesn't feel any safer.

"What the hell was that!"

"None of the doors are open."

For a moment, she doesn't move, caught in the cage of his crossed arms. When she does free herself, it's hardly a fervent pushing him away. In fact, she is remarkably reluctant.

They check each of them, frantically. All are shut and bolted. Castle catches up to Beckett as she pushes in vain at the back door, which doesn't move an inch.

"They're all shut," she says, a slight tremor in her tone. "No-one could have got in. No-one's here but us." She straightens up, steps back, and finds herself plastered over Castle. Strangely, considering her behaviour in the car, she doesn't shove him away. Not only that, she doesn't move away. Castle regards this as – for Beckett – a brick to the head rather than a hint, and takes hold of her.

"So what was the noise?" he says reedily.

Beckett shudders. "I don't know." Her normal confidence is missing. "Nothing could have got in. It must be a branch. Or maybe the outhouse door." She shudders again. "I never… Let's go to bed. Everything'll be better in the morning." She sounds entirely unconvinced.

Castle stares at her. Since her back is planted against his front, his astonishment is entirely lost on her dark hair. _Let's go to bed_? He's waited for _months_ to hear that from Beckett. If only they weren't in a probably-haunted house and they weren't both scared out of their skins. He's so terrified he can't muster even a twitch of a rise. Bloodless, he might say. Certainly he has no spare blood for anything _useful_ , such as Beckett.

On the other hand…

"Yeah," he says, more weakly than he'd like. "Let's. C'mon." He turns her into him, takes her hand, and tows her to the stairs. Her fingers are cool in his. They ascend to the old-fashioned bedroom, never losing contact. Somehow the shrieking wind and lashing rain; the crashing of the branches and other, more ominous, noises outside, are not so bad while they're touching.

The bed seems even smaller than the previous time he'd looked at it. There are no drapes or blinds across the window: nothing to dampen the wild weather or prevent surreptitious shadows slinking across the room; nothing to prevent strange sights prowling the night. Castle shivers, and unconsciously draws Beckett closer, huddling together for warmth. He wishes he'd never read _Salem's Lot_ , and wishes more that the branches weren't still tapping on the windows: stuttering _let me in_.

He huddles more definitely. Beckett doesn't object in the slightest. In fact, she's cuddling in as close as she can manage. Her pulse is still pounding, and her eyes jerking around the room, scanning each corner.

"Let's go to bed," Castle suggests. "Maybe it'll make sense in the morning?" He sounds as uncertain as Beckett, he doesn't let go of her, and they don't move any closer to the bed. There is an uncomfortable pause, as around them the wind and rain lose some force.

It's very silent. The kerosene lamps glow pallidly, barely lightening the darkness beyond a small pool around the bed. Castle looks at the bed, and looks at Beckett.

"Shall we?" he says. It contains no seduction or flirtation whatsoever.

"Guess so," she replies, equally flat.

Neither of them move, for a moment. Finally Beckett straightens her shoulders, and detaches herself. There is another uncomfortable pause, in which the wind whistles derisively. She strides defiantly to the right hand side of the bed, and pulls the blankets and sheets back, staring down.

"It looks quite comfortable," she forces out. "I hope you're not a blanket thief?"

"No. I'd never be so ungentlemanly, Beckett!" He summons up a rictus grin. "Are you?"

"No."

She turns her back on him and starts to disrobe. Castle, frantically trying to maintain some sort of politesse – translated as _not_ staring with bulging eyes and dropped and drooling jaw, in which he is not entirely successful – turns back his own corner of sheets and blankets. He displaces the pillow, and with some surprise finds fabric.

"Beckett, I've found pyjamas," he squawks. "Under the pillow. Maybe…um… maybe there's something you could wear under yours?" He shrugs his shirt off, and undoes his belt.

She reaches back without turning around and pulls out a voluminous mass of fabric. Castle tries not to snigger, in which he is also less than successful but which at least enables him to close his mouth and un-pop his eyes. On balance that's an improvement, though the flash of ire he is certain (from the suddenly harsh set of her spine) is passing through her eyes may leave him devoid of life in short order.

Beckett shakes out the pale fabric and regards it critically. Then she wriggles it over her head and, much to Castle's disappointment, completes her disrobing within its folds, finishing by wriggling her arms into its sleeves. Then she turns round.

Castle's jaw returns to the floor. How can a Victorian nightgown be so unbelievably sexy? Okay, so it was designed for someone six inches shorter than Beckett, but… it's pale cream, silky, with exquisitely detailed embroidery and some enticingly arranged pin-tucking around the… well… bosom. _Definitely_ bosom. It's quite…um…eye-catching. Entrancing. Enthralling. In fact, it's just plain erotic. Oh God. He is so dead. It's not voluminous. It's ethereal. Quite without volition, he moves towards her…

Oh _no_. He's seen this movie scene a thousand times, and it's always ended with blood on the silk. All he needs now to complete the horror –

 _Oooouuuuuuuuuuu_ sings, sinisterly slithering, through the dark night, answered by _Oowhooo_.

" _Shit!_ " he howls, pitched only a note below Beckett's shriek. They lock together. A white form ghosts past the window. Beckett dives for the bed, Castle, still trying to kick off his pants, barely behind. He finds himself alone, buried under the covers. When he peeps out, Beckett is circling, with her gun, around the room.

"What are you doing?" he breathes.

"My gun was on the nightstand."

"Gun?"

She stops, and returns to the bed, dousing one lamp and dimming the other to almost-extinction on the way. The nightgown floats around her, incongruous with the raised Glock. She carefully puts it down, close at hand.

"I think it was an owl," she wobbles.

Castle wraps an arm around her. "It was scary." The howl comes again. They cuddle together, tremulously. "That sounds like a wolf." Which is definitely scary.

"There aren't wolves in New York City." That doesn't sound wholly convinced.

"There were wolves out here in the eighteen-hundreds."

"We have _not_ gone through a time-slip."

More howls. Beckett is pale. Castle doesn't comment, mostly because he's pretty sure he's pale too. The rest of his reasoning is not-so-slowly being subsumed by his realisation that he is clad in only his boxers, and Beckett is clad only in a very silky nightgown and is (one) in his arms and (two) in bed with him. In his arms. In bed. In a nightgown. His body has entirely forgotten its terror. His brain, sadly, has not.

He wriggles down into the nest of blankets and the fat bolster, taking her with him. She's surprisingly unresisting, and the soft fabric is still enthrallingly erotic against his naked skin. The owl hoots again, and even though Castle knows it's only an owl he still grips her harder: reality in this strange nightmare of a long-past world; his light in this eerie, unearthly dark.

* * *

 _Thank you to all readers and reviewers._


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"What are you doing?"

"I'm cold. You're warm. And you have a gun."

"You're scared."

"Too damn right I'm scared. There are strange noises, wolves outside, we have no way of getting out of here, and there's a beautiful woman in a pale silk nightgown. This is a horror movie waiting to happen."

"This is not a horror movie."

"Then why is your heart pounding too?" Castle blurts out. "You're just as scared as me."

"I have a gun." Which is not an answer but an evasion, especially as she's still cuddled close. "We took a wrong turn and there's been a series of odd things. Nothing more. No horror movie, no time slips. I'm going to sleep." She turns away to her own side of the bed.

Castle pulls her back. His brain has no input whatsoever into this decision. His instinctual terror is entirely in charge. "Don't," he wavers. "Stay here."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"You _were_ ," Castle says pathetically. "You moved."

"Are you five?" she snips. "There are no monsters – _aaieieeeieeee!_ What the _fuck_ was _that_?" Castle doesn't answer, being too busy trying not to scream as her sharp nails dig into his shoulders. And definitely not trying not to scream because of the latest uncanny screeching noise.

"Another owl?" he offers threadily. "Look, it's at the window."

Beckett rises from his chest and peeks. "Yes," she breathes out on a long sigh of relief. "Just an owl." She collapses back on to him. Castle carefully does not say _now who's scared of the monsters_?, and instead cuddles her. Without any thought, his fingers pet. She makes a tiny little noise, and – yes, that is quite definitely a snuggle. Castle doesn't want her to go anywhere else. He is very, very certain that he needs to know that there is another human being here with him, every minute until the sun rises to chase the ghosts away.

He really, really wishes he hadn't thought that.

Then he changes his mind. Because Beckett has wiggled to get comfortable, and if he wasn't so scared of the dark he'd be doing something entirely inappropriate.

"Beckett?" he falters. "Beckett, what is going on here?"

Answer comes there none. In words. There is another wiggle. Her head lands over his heart.

"What are you doing?"

There is a mutter, followed by a mumble. Eventually it resolves into, "Checking you're there."

Suddenly Castle is very much _there_. "Sure I'm here," he rumbles. "Just so long as you're here too." His brain fries – it must be from sustained terror. "Come here," he commands, pulls her up, and pulls her head down to his.

He kisses her as if it's their last night on Earth; their last chance in life: hard, searching, possessive and passionate, and she opens like a flower for him to take her mouth with all the desire he's never shown; that she's never shown. His fingers twist into the delicate fabric of the archaic nightgown, covering everything but oh-so-stunningly-sexy and enticing, spreading over her and stroking. Her hands curl around his shoulders, her leg and all that gorgeous material slithering across his waist and wrapping around his hip.

She takes his mouth for her own, exploring, a little nip on his lip; a stroke of tongue to soothe his tiny hurt; and he allows her, all fear forgotten. Flight, fight – or the third _F_. Seems they've found a cure for terror.

She nips wickedly again and he fires up, rolls them so he's above her and descends on her mouth, his hand sliding under her neck and over her shoulder to glide on to her breast; the other hand on her stomach and fingers on hipbone; thumb slipping lower, still placed over the flimsy gown, which is beginning to bunch up as his thumb moves. One hard leg moves between hers, pressing her to open wider, to let him in; her hand slides over his flank and down to his hip, long, elegant digits wandering sensually. This is _not_ one-sided.

Outside, the narrow moon's sly light shines down, creeping through the window voyeuristically; accentuating the slinking shadows around the bed. Wide white wings ghost by; sharp canines flash briefly between the crowding trees of the thick forest. The small cabin cowers within the circle; tiny lights flickering through the branches; a thin mist spreading.

Inside, both Castle and Beckett are oblivious. Heat rises and burns between them; mouths war and raid and fight and seek conquest; hard strength overpowers lithe muscle and demands sweet surrender to scorching sexuality. His hand tugs up the nightgown, seeking frantically for the satin skin below, finding a scrap of hampering fabric and tearing it away, forced on by her grip around his swollen hardness and the desperate desire of her panting, half-sobbing breaths mixing with his harsh noises. Hard, questing fingers find the slick folds, the fluid heat, the welcome of her body as he pushes them into her and swallows the moan, holds her still against the writhing of her hips as they take her slowly, strongly; dragging the moans towards cries until she wrenches his hand away from her and rips his boxers off and then he rises above her, the pale fabric pooled around her waist and her naked below that, and she guides him home with one powerful thrust to be fully within her body. He surges as her hands bite down on his back: forces one hand between them to touch her intimately, forceful as his other movement, and she screams high and loud into the unfriendly night as he shouts and then there's only exhausted, sated silence.

He snuggles her into his side, and enjoys the languorous contact, half-dozing, the ancient bed creaking softly beneath their small movements as they find the best fit to become wholly comfortable.

Castle peers around in the faint light of the dimmed lamp, and notices, horrified, the mist trailing eerie fingers across the window; pinpoint flashes of light within it. They seem far too close to eyes for his comfort.

"I ain't afraid of no ghosts," he quavers. The slinking, sinister mist ignores him.

"There are no ghosts," Beckett says from his chest. If only she sounded confident. He sweeps a glance around and tries not to look at the pooling shadows around the oak closet; cuddling her close. Her heart is racing, too, but holding her to him helps.

"Beckett…" he starts, and falters as the scuttling shadows surround them. "Beckett…I…"

"Shut up and kiss me, Castle," she half-whimpers. "Kiss me like it's real."

"It _is_ real," he growls, and stops her mouth with his. _It is real_. It's going to be real when they're out of this nightmare, too. He's wanted this for so long; all through the weeks of cases; all through the summer when he thought he'd never be allowed back for meddling in her mother's case; these last few weeks when the gulf between them hadn't narrowed for more than an instant. It's _going_ to be real.

He plunges into her mouth: assertively possessive, and when she eases and relaxes and allows him to take as he pleases, he gentles and begins to seduce, turning all his experience to the slow sweep of flirtatious tongue, the slide of languorous lips against her lusciousness; propped above her and now unaware of the midnight corners and slithering shades around them. Her hands glide delicately across his shoulders, settling on his back and neck, fingers running into soft hair. He leaves her avidly receptive mouth and dances kisses across her jaw, up her neck along the nerve jumping under his touch, around to her ear and he nips neatly so that she squeaks and wriggles and then sighs as he finds a spot that sends her lax and loose.

His hand wanders down to the neckline of the filmy nightgown, finding a small bow which his curious fingers tug. It opens, spreading under a tiny touch to reveal burgeoning cleavage, smooth, satiny skin under the soft fabric. He drops a line of kisses downward to the valley between her breasts, nudges the cloth from his path and settles to feast. She curves up to the movement of his lips, demanding he give her more, knots fingers in his hair and tries to steer him to the proud nipples. He won't be steered, lightly nibbling around them, until she's only focused on his mouth and his touch. She's so sensitive to him: he smiles wolfishly against her skin and hears her heavy breaths riffling his hair; and then finally takes one hard peak into his mouth and suckles.

She cries out. Castle continues, until she's whimpering and moaning and her nails are only just shy of breaking his skin.

"You like that," he murmurs seductively. "You like my mouth."

"Yesss," she moans, so he tastes the other side until speech is lost.

The blankets are kicked back, so he can see her laid out before him in the pale lamplight, the gown rucked up across her thighs, the concealment more erotic than display would be. His free hand strokes down across her stomach, catches the lace-trimmed hem and brings it up to leave her surrounded by the silky fabric and opened to his gaze.

"You like my mouth," he growls again, "so you'll like this," and he slides down to lodge between her now-spread legs. She's soaked, already squirming as his breath teases her, gasping out his name into the thin air, and he opens her still wider and licks through liquid heat for the first time. But not the last. Tasting her is addictive; her reaction is explosive, and when he plays with the knotted nerves her noise is continuous; his name spilling uncontrollably from her lips as she's begging for more, pleading to climax, wholly and indisputably his as she crashes over and screams his name. He's so aroused simply by her reaction that he's on the edge himself; rasps against her "Now it's my turn," and surges up and into her in one hard movement; she clenches around him and cries his name and suddenly, impossibly, she's coming around him and that's all it takes as he explodes within her.

He's still collapsed over her moments later, caging her under him, still within her.

"You're heavy," she notes. He begins to shift sideways, but she stops him. "Like it. Safe." Her arms wrap around his chest. "Don't move."

"Okay," he rumbles. "Don't you run away either."

She snickers. "Can't, with you on top of me."

"I like being on top of you. I like you under me in bed." He starts to fill again, rising within her, as she moves a little and rubs against him. "It gives me so many options."

He can just see her full-lipped, sulky pout.

"What if _I_ want some options?" she whispers hotly into his ear.

Castle smiles down evilly. "What if _I_ don't want you to have options? What if I want you at my mercy?" He hums a snatch of song. "What if I want to do bad things with you?" She wriggles sensually under him. "I've caught you now." The mist-warped moonlight gleams in his eyes, a strange ice-blue sheen. "You're mine."

"I am?" she queries sleepily, and her own eyes glisten greenly.

"Yes," he says, without admitting contradiction. "This is for real. It's not just for one night. It's not just to keep the ghosts away – what is it?"

Her eyes are wide and glassy. "I thought I saw something…" She shakes her head. "Just a shadow."

Castle ducks to kiss her: hard, searching and possessive. "This is real. _We're_ real. You're not getting away from me now." He takes her mouth again, prisons her with his weight and the hard length now full within her, pins her unresisting hands by her head. "You like this, too," he whispers ominously. "Here and now, you want it. You want me to do bad things with you." She squirms, tight and drenched around him, totally lost in the spell of his wicked words. He's forgotten all his fears, burnt off in the scalding heat of her body and the fire around them.

It doesn't occur to him that his soft, insinuating speech; the ominous promise in his tone and actions; the darkness of his eyes; that all of these are unusual. It doesn't occur to him that Beckett's surrender, her submission to his forceful will; her accession to his body's strength; that all of these are unusual too. Behind him, unseen, the shadows gather and spread, reaching out to the foot of the bed; outside, the narrow moon watches coldly as the wolves slink back and forth through the forest and the owls swoop silently among the grasping branches of the crooked trees.

"Take me," she breathes. It's all he needs to hear.

He ravages her mouth, eliciting soft, mewing, sexy noises; small whimpers around his thrusting tongue. Every small, receptive noise fires him up further: he nips sharply on her lip and she moans; he takes both her wrists in one strong hand and uses the other to palm her breast, she's pushing into his firm touch but he won't let her move too far; a small arch up to him that's all he'll allow; the thin fabric slipping between them as her leg stretches around his waist and he takes her body just as hard as he's owning her mouth but she's right there with him, totally hot for him and rising to every move he makes. _His_. Completely and totally and utterly _his_.

He moves off her mouth and she moans; moves down her neck and kisses over the pulse hammering there; the dark comes down around them as the lamp gutters and flares out but neither of them notice as he nips down sharply through her porcelain skin and there's blood trickling down, staining the silk as both of them come _hard_ and it's better than it's ever been.

The shadows cover him, and he doesn't think before he dips his head and licks away the thickening blood at her shoulder; doesn't think about how it tastes so good on his avid tongue. The deep stain on the pale material gives him only a dark, demonic pleasure. She's whimpering beneath him, trying to stretch up to his neck; he only realises that he's been bitten too when her tongue flicks out to catch a sluggish, torpid drip. He lowers and turns his head, still licking at the wound in her neck as she does his.

Dimly, he senses something wrong: the feral, hungry need scratching at his skin, reflected in Beckett's glinting green eyes, is alien: he's never felt this desire to dominate, to _take_ ; never broken a woman's skin. The taste of the blood on his tongue tries to distract him, but now he's had the thought he clutches it as if it's a lifeline.

"Beckett," he gasps frantically. "Beckett, this isn't _right_."

He pulls away from her, more difficult than refusing that further glass of Scotch, than turning down a white powdered line had been years ago, when he forced himself to stay clean despite everyone around him. He wants to dip again to her neck, taste her while he's taking her hard and rough and she's pleading for more of him, but this is _wrong_.

His hand lands on the nightstand and her shield, and it's that which breaks the spell. He lifts it, puts it in her hand so they're both gripping it, and she sits bolt upright.

"What the _hell_ just happened?" She dabs at her shoulder, and winces. "Wh – you _bit_ me?"

"You bit me too," Castle points out, and gestures.

"Put the light on."

Castle leaves the bed, finds one of the old-fashioned matches and spills, and lights the lamp which still has fuel. "The other's empty."

"Let's get more light." She shudders. "I _bit_ you? Too?"

"And licked off the blood," Castle adds, which on balance wasn't the best thing to say. Beckett emits a formlessly disgusted noise, and slides out of bed. Even bloodstained, the nightgown is still appallingly sexy, especially as it's open much wider at the neckline than originally. Castle suddenly realises that he's naked, and his reaction to Beckett is not subtle. She's very obviously not looking. He pulls on the pyjama pants.

Instead, she collects her gun, and starts down the stairs to the can of kerosene and two more lamps. The shadows gather at her heels; and the chill wind is again soughing at the windows, as if it's laughing; knowing and nasty. She attains the can and fills all the lamps full: lights every last one to chase the shadows away.

Castle doesn't raise so much as a whisper of protest at her actions. In the brighter light he can see the wound he's left on her, and he flinches. She looks full at him, and then flinches too.

"I don't…" She trails off, and he hears _normally draw blood in bed_.

"Me either," he agrees. "This isn't right." He pauses. "I've never… um… been that…um…" He dissolves in a tide of confusion.

"Me either," Beckett says, equally embarrassed.

They take the lights upstairs and, since it is not warm, slide back into bed together to the sinister song of the owls and wolves. Castle is still clutching Beckett's shield, as she is her gun. She curls into his side, and wraps an arm round his waist. He puts his around her shoulders, and both gun and shield arrive on the nightstand. Sitting, he observes with some interest, she's _much_ smaller than he. Must be those astonishingly long legs – which only a few moments ago were wrapped around his waist and… and this is _not_ a good thought.

* * *

 _Thank you to all readers and reviewers._


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

"You're still bleeding," she says, and leans closer, eyes gleaming.

"Don't!" he says.

"Huh?"

"Just… don't. Something's wrong. We bit each other and were licking up the blood and _something's trying to turn us into vampires Beckett_!"

"There are _no_ vampires."

"So how come you bit me and drew blood? Are you usually that vicious in bed? Because I have to tell you that bloodstains are _hell_ to get out of thousand thread-count cotton sheets!"

Beckett raises an eyebrow at him. "Is that really your main concern?" she asks coolly. "Because you bit me too, and _I_ don't have your laundry service. Do you usually get that rough? Because rough only does it for me if I get to be rough too."

Castle's mouth drops open. Fortunately no words emerge, since he would only get into (more) trouble.

"Urgh?" he manages. Some seconds later he emits, "You _liked_ it?" She doesn't answer. "Anyway, you didn't just bite me, you clawed," he accuses. "You're just as rough. I think we need some ground rules, starting with _no drawing blood_."

She smirks at him, and draws nails very deliberately over his thigh. Without drawing blood.

"If you do that, I'll have to do this," and he draws his broad fingers across her thigh in return. She draws in breath, and opens very slightly to him, turning her face to hers; eyes deep and darkening. His turn stormy and intent as he bends his head and their lips touch once more, sparking the inferno.

He shoves her down, all thoughts of gentleness and doubts of their behaviour incinerated instantly by the sharp nip on his lower lip; his hands tugging up the nightdress and delving into soaked heat, hers pushing down the pyjama pants and finding the thick weight oh-so-ready for her; he pins her to the sheets and as quickly is back inside her, to her vocal pleasure.

It's only when he realises his teeth are back at her neck that he wrenches himself away, just ahead of her.

"Beckett, we have to _stop_."

"That's not something I ever thought I'd hear you say in bed," she flips back, but her eyes are confused, and she's not her normal snarky self.

"Something's wrong. I… um… I don't think we should be doing this."

"We are _not_ turning into vampires. Or any other form of supernatural entity."

A high, whining noise sneaks through the windows: the wind, ridiculing her statement. Beckett ignores it.

"What else could it be? Something's trying to possess us."

"Castle! We have not passed through a time slip. The house is not haunted, and we are not being possessed and turned into vampires." Her voice is _almost_ firm.

Outside, yellow eyes gleam, white wings swoop, thin clouds and mist screen the forest. The high, whining wind continues, and a shadow flits across the moon. Perhaps it's just a trick of the light that makes it seem to have wide, dark wings, perhaps it's just an optical illusion.

"This isn't real," he says.

"Not real?" She sounds shocked, and tries to turn away.

"We're real. But the rest isn't. It's not how it should _be_. It's too dark and too rough and it's just _wrong_."

"It was wrong," she says flatly. "Okay. Then let's just go to sleep and forget it ever happened."

About that point it dawns on Castle that Beckett has totally misunderstood him. "Not being in bed with you," he says irritably. "That's not wrong. Don't be dumb. But the way it went the _second_ time, and how it was about to go this time – that's not _right_. We agreed it wasn't right, and then we were straight back to it. Something's wrong." He forcibly turns her round to face him. "Are you really saying you normally draw blood?"

"No." She blushes furiously, but holds his gaze. Then she smirks. "Not on a first date."

Castle snickers, and drops a hard, quick kiss on her lips, pulling back as rapidly. They snuggle together, and without comment Beckett lifts the shield off the nightstand and they clasp it within their linked hands.

Outside, the wind howls furiously. Someone given to personification might have thought it sounded frustrated, but of course, even for Castle, that would be ridiculous.

"I…" Castle begins, tentatively. "Um… I think your shield is stopping whatever it is." Beckett stares at him. "What's it made of? I thought they were nickel silver. Alloy. No silver at all. If it was silver" – she cuts across him.

"Um…Silver under the front." She colours up very delicately. "It shouldn't be, but… well… Dad got it made when he got dry and…. Well… Anyway, lots of officers have a faked badge because if you lose the real one you're in trouble."

"That's it! It's silver. That's why it works." Beckett stares some more. "Beckett, everyone knows that silver protects against evil."

"You what now? Seriously?"

" _Yes_. It worked. Look, we're holding on to it now and we're not… um… well, we're not…." _Not fucking like animals with teeth and claws and licking up each other's blood_. He's got enough self-preservation to keep that happy little thought firmly behind his forehead. "Look. If you don't believe me, let go of it."

She does. Beckett never backs off from a challenge. He does not let go, the edges biting his palm.

The wind chuckles at the window, a mean-spirited draught scraping at Castle's shoulders. In the corners, the shadows press at the pools of light from the lamps; outside, the owls and wolves hoot and howl.

For a minute, there is quiet, and nothing happens. Then Beckett's fingers clench in the gossamer fabric around her, and her whole body tenses, resistant. He's seen this posture before: when she's doing something she doesn't want to do. Talking to him, for example. It lasts another minute, the fabric creases and crumples in her grip –

And then her body relaxes and her eyes turn a strange, half-luminous shade in the moonlight as one of the lamps gutters and goes out and she turns into him and kisses delicately at his pectoral. As if that weren't arousing enough, her hand trails over his thigh, and settles, as featherlight as the fabric surrounding her, on to his groin. Shield in his hand or not, he's instantly aroused. Then again, he's been in some way aroused around Beckett since the day he met her, it's just that sometimes it's not physically apparent.

She takes swift, savage advantage of his arousal, nipping sharply, a little painfully, at his nipples, palming him with more than a hint of sharp nails: a little more edge than, held to sanity by the silver shield, he likes. He gives only another few seconds, in which she nips hard enough to leave a mark of possession on his chest; moves towards his neck – and that is far enough to prove his point. He presses the shield against her, and she stops, wild-eyed.

"What the _hell_?" she asks the heavy, cold air about her; but answer comes there none. She looks at Castle. "That… that's not me." She swallows, thick and scraping. "I… it wanted to _bite_."

Castle cuddles her in, making absolutely certain sure that the shield is touching them both. "It's nice to know that you – real you – doesn't want to bite. I don't look nearly as good with teeth marks in my ruggedly handsome neck."

Instead of laughing or rolling her eyes, Beckett winces, and looks away. Castle pulls her in tighter and gently turns her face back to meet his gaze again.

"It's okay. After all, right now we _both_ have teeth marks." He traces the trail of blood on the nightgown. The wind whips up again, hammering branches against the window. The eerie howling of the wolves intensifies. Suddenly the darkness outside is pressing in: every tap of the clawing branches sinister; every scuttling shadow scary. A door slams, again.

"It's not inside," Beckett says, very firmly. Suspiciously firmly. "We checked."

"Um…" Castle says with considerable trepidation. Beckett is not going to like his next words, he knows. "Did you notice that when we were… er… under the influence everything wasn't so spooky?"

"Are you _seriously_ suggesting that this place – which is _not_ through a time slip and is _not_ alive and is _not_ able to make us do anything – is trying to turn us into vampires by _scaring_ us into each other's arms?"

"Er… yes?"

"Oh." Silence. "Dammit." Silence. "I really hoped I was just being dumb."

"You _agree_ with me?"

"Evidence," Beckett spits out bitterly. "Got to go where it takes me. Yes, I noticed that when we – er – then it got quieter outside. Now there's lots more howling, the wind's risen, and the trees are tapping the windows. Not to mention the slamming door that wasn't."

She looks around the room angrily. "And the lamp shouldn't have gone out either. So something's up." She glares. "Unless this is a dumb prank that someone" – she skewers him – "set up."

"No." He stops there. Saying _not much point in setting you up since you were pissed at me anyway and I like living_ is not helpful. Besides which, he is now perfectly certain that at least half her behaviour was because she was – and _is_ – attracted and then he hurt her by prying into her mom's case when she'd said _don't_. He can live with the Beckett snark. It's cute, and funny, and he can give the same back. He can't live with the Beckett anger-out-of-hurt, which only makes him remember that he caused it, first up, and then he's angry-out-of-guilt and then they fight and then they're back another ten yards behind the original first down.

"No," she agrees. "And Ryan and Espo couldn't fix this."

"Lanie?"

"She wouldn't. Lanie won't even watch a sci-fi movie let alone anything scary."

"So what do we do?"

"Hang on to the shield."

"While we're asleep?"

Now that he looks at her, she does appear tired, worn thin.

"If we pinned it to your nightie" – she flicks a sceptical glance his way, but there's no power behind it and her hand is still clasped in his with the shield between them – "somewhere I could cuddle you and touch it" –

"You what now?"

"Or I put on the pyjamas and we pin it to those and you cuddle me," he says happily. "Makes no difference to me, except that I guess I'm more likely to stay in touch with you." She raises an eyebrow in time with the rising of the wind to full gale force, the windows rattling. "I'm bigger than you. You might not be able to stay in touch."

Beckett clamps her lips closed. Castle is almost certain she was going to say _I can take you_ and then thought better of inviting all his witty and salacious replies.

Another lamp gutters out. There are only two left, and the howling resurges, close enough that Castle thinks, shudderingly, that the wolves must be under the window. He doesn't get out of bed to check: he simply hangs on to Beckett and the life-saving shield.

"This should _not_ happen," she says irritably, returning to normal snark, fortunately directed at the situation and not Castle. "It's not logical or sensible." She humphs, directed generically at the cabin. "It's ridiculous. It's worse than your crazy theories. This shouldn't _be_ ," she finishes plaintively.

"But it is. We're here." Despite the foulness of the dark, the weather, and the wolves, as he too holds the silver shield he's recovering some confidence as Beckett recovers hers. "We're here," he repeats, "in bed together, which I have to say is a totally _interesting_ experience so far which I think we should repeat regularly – _ow!_ That was totally unnecessary, Beckett! If you do that again I'll need to tuck you in so you can't." He pauses, and his mind skitters. "Um… actually that's quite a good idea anyway. But you shouldn't elbow me. It's unkind." And having had a good idea, he instantly acts upon it. Being quite a lot bigger and heavier, and not being impeded by several yards of floating fabric, very shortly he has achieved an almost nirvanic state of being snuggled down under the blankets with a Beckett-bundle wrapped in his arms and both of them in contact with the shield, which is pinned into the shoulder of the nightgown. (Castle had hoped to pin it over her breast, but no such luck.)

The one matter preventing complete bliss on Castle's part is that Beckett is currently muttering blackly into her pillow about big bullies rather than snuggling against him lovingly. That is entirely unfair – "What was _that!_ " he yells, as he sees a shape at the window.

"What? Where?"

Beckett's sitting up with gun in hand in half a millisecond.

"At the window. I saw – oh. It was probably a bat."

"Ugh. The window's shut. Nothing can get in. Let's just try to get some sleep, okay? We've solved the real problem," she says reassuringly.

Castle slides back down under the covers and wraps Beckett in again, making sure that he's touching the shield. He had had every intention of making love to her, but if he doesn't keep a firm grip on the metal he's scared of what might happen. As he drifts into slumber, his imagination starts to wonder what the story of this cabin was.

Around the sleeping pair, pale fabric drifting about them as the blankets slip and slide, the lamps fade and fail and the black night draws them in, only a tinge of moonlight illuminating them. Thin shadows, cast by the branches, claw at their forms.

Castle, deep in vaguely horrible nightmares, chasing phantoms chasing him in an endless, Sisyphean cycle of pointless horror, doesn't know that he's let the shield slip from his lax unconsciousness. Gradually his dreams change from chasing phantoms to chasing a female form, garbed in gossamer, always slightly out of reach. He speeds up, desperate to catch her, keep her, take her, make her his and never let her go… but then he catches her and turns her and she smiles to reveal sharp canines and harsh green eyes in Beckett's face and he wakes panting and terrified – and shamefully aroused. He fumbles for the shield and only just touches it before he gives in to the appallingly strong impulse to cup and palm – but the right word here would be _assault_ , he knows – her gorgeous breasts: the more so because now he knows how perfectly they fit, how beautiful they'd look with the trickle of blood across them… _Oh, shit_. He frantically finds the shield, and waits for _someone else's_ thoughts to leave his horror-stricken head.

Sound asleep in his arms, Beckett snuffles gently and snuggles in. Castle, too terrified to close his eyes again, lies rigid until the grey watches of false dawn, startling at each hoot and howl; each trailing shadow and tap upon the window pane. As light begins to crawl in, he lets himself fall asleep.

He's woken almost immediately by a shriek.

"Wha'zz't?" he mumbles, thick-headed with too little rest and too many nightmares. Then he sneezes.

"What the _hell_?" are his next words, fully awake in an instant. Beckett is there in a few tatters of greying, fragile fabric, covering barely anything, the shield still at her shoulder. The blankets and sheets are dust laden and moth eaten, the bed carries a faint, disturbing smell of dampness and rot. The room is dilapidated, the lamps broken and empty, the roof open and timbers broken.

"What happened?"

"The sun rose," Beckett emits very shakily. "The sun rose and it all fell apart. I _saw_ it happen. It's still happening. _Look_!"

Castle looks. As he does, the window frames dissolve, rotting, and the glass shivers to powder. "We need to get out of here!" he yells, and grabs his clothes upon the word. Beckett is barely behind him as they tumble frantically down the stairs to the lower floor, already old and stained with wet, the settle crumbling. They dress in haste and exit even faster, Beckett clutching shield and gun. Outside, they watch in appalled fascination as the wooden cabin…disappears.

"I wanna go home," Beckett says weakly. "I just wanna go home."

"Me too."

He extends an arm and finds hers creeping towards him. They cling together, still shaky, still scared. Castle, always more inclined to believe in the improbable, unlikely, and frankly impossible, stares at the space where the cabin had been, and around. The trees are thinning in the dawn light, he'd swear. There's a hum from far away, which after a moment he recognises as the familiar white noise of traffic, getting louder.

"I think we'd better get back in the car."

"Uh?"

"We need to get back in the car. I think we're about to find ourselves on the Palisades Interstate shoulder."

"Uh?"

"Beckett, just _move!_ "

She finally gets into the car, not an instant too soon. As the sun rises fully, the last remnants of forest fade and they are indeed parked on the shoulder.

"My phone's working," Castle announces. "And my watch."

"We've got a three-quarter full tank of gas again."

"Can we use it to get home?" he says pathetically. "I wanna go home too."

Beckett simply nods and starts the engine.

"I'm going to see if I can find out anything about the cabin," Castle decides, and starts to investigate on his phone. It doesn't take him long.

"That's _vile_. Horrible. They… that's _vile_ ," he repeats.

He turns his eyes on the story once more. In 1850 there had indeed been a cabin, right where they had found it. That had been a poor year for crops, and a poorer year for deer in the forest. There had been a couple, married (of course, in those days), who lived there, scratching out a living with a pig and a few chickens, way up in the forest. But the fall had been hard for more than just humans… and the wolves had closed in.

When they discovered what had become of the couple, the searchers didn't just find their corpses: the wife in a pale nightdress, bloodstained; the husband in only his skin. They also found the corpses of wolves, bitten through the throat in a frenzied attack. The strange thing was…the teethmarks were human. On all the corpses: wolf and human alike.

No-one ever lived in that cabin again. It was left to rot, with the corpses within it.

Castle relays the brief, horrible story to Beckett. Silence falls within the cruiser.

* * *

Two hours later, they're pulling up at her apartment. Very little has been said on the way there, but with every mile of modernity an atmosphere of relieved reassurance has grown.

"You want a coffee?"

"Yeah. Sure."

Castle follows her up. She enters, kicks her shoes off immediately, gazes round and sighs with relief.

"Home. Normal. No more uncanny events."

She turns to him, draws his head down and kisses him. The clean fall daylight shines from hazel eyes to bright blue.

"No more macabre misdirection, Castle. Let's take this in the _right_ direction."

 _ **Fin.**_

* * *

 _Happy Hallowe'en, every one! Thank you to all readers and reviewers, named, guest, and possibly ghostly._

 _The second chapter of Shadows will be posted tomorrow._


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